Retailers generally spend a lot of time and money trying to engage consumers through promotions, whether using weekly coupon circulars, print or online ad campaigns, email blasts, or loyalty program benefits. These promotional campaigns tend to have very low redemption rates, in the single percentage digits, and the return on investment can be hard to correlate. Given this issue, retailers have become increasingly interested in targeting promotions more carefully to specific market segments or even individual consumers. However, targeted promotion campaigns are usually far removed from consumers' point of purchase decision in the store itself, given that in-store ads are typically generic (i.e., not targeted to specific consumers).
The growing saturation of smartphone device use by consumers has led to various approaches to advertising directly to consumers through leveraging their device's global positioning system (“GPS”) location. One approach, referred to as “geo-fencing”, allows a retailer to send a promotion to a consumer when their device's GPS location is within a specified area (usually near the retailer's own store or near a competitor's store). Other known approaches include using indoor location technologies to know when a consumer is near a given digital display, and updating the display to show a promotion targeted to that consumer.